Web Of Darkness. HELEN BROOKS

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      ‘I am playing at nothing, Miss Gordon,’ he bit back sharply, his eyes as cold as ice and his face stony. ‘The last thing on my mind is games. I have been assaulted with no warning, accused of all manner of diverse crimes, forced to leave a Press conference in the worst possible circumstances, knowing that my photo will be splashed all over the front pages tomorrow morning, to the delight of my competitors, all because you have had a brain-storm. Now, if that counts as playing in your book you are crazier than I imagined.’

      ‘I am not crazy——’ She stopped abruptly when he uncoiled his big body as the chauffeur opened the door, and he reached in as soon as he was outside, almost hauling her out of the car.

      ‘Now you are going to come in the house and explain to me what this is all about,’ he said coldly, ‘and you’d better pray while you’re about it that you can convince me it’s justified.’

      ‘You’re a bully,’ she said weakly as she stood next to him on the driveway in front of the endless mansion. She didn’t know which intimidated her more, the huge, incredibly beautiful house or the massive figure next to her. At the hotel she had been too incensed and blind with rage to take in his great height, but now she realised he must be at least a foot taller than her five feet four and he towered over her like an avenging angel. Or perhaps not an angel, she corrected herself silently as her gaze fastened on the lethal cold eyes—no, definitely not!

      ‘You don’t know the half,’ he said grimly as he ushered her up the massive stone steps towards the crested front door. ‘You made me lose my temper tonight, Miss Gordon, and that’s something I haven’t done in years. You wouldn’t like it a second time.’

      ‘No?’ She stared at him defiantly as her legs shook.

      ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘but I’ve got the most dis-tinct feeling it’s a definite possibility, so just play it cool, eh?’

      ‘Cool?’ She jerked her arm from his hand and glared up into the dark face with all the venom she could muster. ‘Cool! You’ve got a cheek, you really have——’

      ‘Now that is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black,’ he said tightly as the chauffeur drove the big car past them and towards a large row of garages in the distance, ‘but I’ve got no intention of standing out here bandying words with you any more. You’ll come in, you’ll sit down and you will tell me what this is all about. Got it?’

      As he opened the front door she had the strangest feeling, for a brief moment, that she had stepped on to the set of a film. If a famous film star had suddenly glided down the huge winding staircase that dominated the far end of the massive hall she wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Dallas and Dynasty, eat your heart out, she thought with desperate humour as her eyes took in the ankle-deep cream carpet, the dark wood and obvious antiques and the glittering chandeliers overhead. And she had hit him! She had never suffered from hysteria before, but there was something flooding into her system that must be akin to it.

      ‘In here.’ He had guided her across the enormous expanse and through an open door before she realised what was happening, and she found herself in a room that would have graced any stately home. ‘Sit down.’ She sank gratefully into the chair, which immediately dwarfed her small shape in its vastness; her legs had been beginning to give way. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked expressionlessly.

      ‘I’m sorry?’ She dragged her eyes away from the beautifully furnished room with some difficulty and gazed vacantly at his dark face as he gestured towards a large drinks cabinet at one side of the massive fireplace.

      ‘A drink?’ he asked irritably.

      She nodded tightly, her face chary. ‘Sherry, please, but I’m not stopping here long. I’ll get a taxi home.’

      He poured a stiff measure of Scotch into a heavy crystal tumbler and what looked like half a bottle of pale cream sherry into a large schooner glass and walked over to her, handing her the drink before seating himself in the large armchair opposite which hardly looked big enough to hold his broad shape. All this wealth, all this luxury; how much of it had been obtained by wrecking people’s lives the way he had theirs? she wondered suddenly, with a surge of anger. Driving desperate businessmen to the limit, calling in creditors, withholding loans, re-fusing time extensions…The list was endless and no doubt he knew all the tricks.

      ‘OK, the spark is back in those brown eyes,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s have it all, and from the be-ginning, please.’

      ‘What’s the point?’ She took a gulp of the sherry and tried to fight back the flood of emotion that was threatening to take her over. All this money—her father’s little firm had been a drop in the ocean to him!

      ‘The point is you made some pretty serious accusations tonight,’ he said furiously. ‘Planned to give me maximum aggravation. Now that smells bad to me, my pretty. What are you after?’

      ‘After!’ She spat the word at him as she set the sherry glass down with a bang on the little table next to the chair and stood up in a jerky movement to pace over to the crackling fire. She was cold, so cold, she’d never be warm again. She shivered violently. And she hated this man.

      ‘Here.’ He rose quickly when he noticed the con-vulsive movement as the warmth flicked her frozen nerves. ‘I didn’t give you your coat, did I? It’s still in the car.’ As she felt the heavy material of his suit jacket slide over her shoulders she stiffened in protest. The cloth was impregnated with the clean, sensual smell of him and she didn’t want it near her.

      ‘I don’t want it.’ She shrugged the jacket off her shoulders and handed it back to him abruptly, her eyes dark in the whiteness of her face.

      His eyes narrowed as he took the coat from her and she knew he sensed her revulsion of any contact with him. It was there in the stiffening of the hard square jaw and the faintly cruel tightening of the firm mouth. That raw, almost tangible fascination was back in full force, she noted despairingly, the wide, powerful set of his shoulders more accentuated now under the silky blue shirt he wore easily, his hard masculine body taut and still as he stared down at her without speaking for long, tight seconds.

      ‘You’re pushing me to the limit,’ he said at last in hard, measured tones. ‘I don’t make idle threats, Miss Gordon. I don’t want to hurt you, but——’

      ‘Hurt me?’ It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so painfully sad, she thought bitterly as she surveyed him through eyes misted with hot tears. ‘Hurt me? You can’t do anything to me that you haven’t already done, Mr Steel,’ she said shakily as she strove to maintain her grip on herself. ‘Your ruthless greed lost my father his business, his home and ultimately his life. Everything is gone, every-thing. You have effectively wiped out the first twenty-two years of my life. How could you follow that?’ She pushed back her heavy fold of silky black hair from her shoulders with a trembling hand as she spoke. ‘And the worst thing of all is that you didn’t even remember his name.’

      The tears that had been threatening to overflow all night wouldn’t be denied any longer and, as she lowered her head blindly, her cheeks wet with the warm, salty flow, she realised, with a stab of horror, that she was going to make an even worse fool of herself than she had already. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it, not a thing.

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